russian is basically the same language as english. the main differences are 1) it is spoken more angrily, 2) all nouns have -ski, -ova or -nost on the end, and 3) all verbs wear little furry shapkas. incidentally, [/lie], the russian word 'shapka', meaning furry hat, looks just like the word 'wanka' when written in cyrillic! how we laughed...[lie]